The Translations of Fortune: James I's 'Kingis Quair' and the Rereading of Lancastrian Poetry.
- Author/Editor
- Martin, Joanna.
- Title
- The Translations of Fortune: James I's 'Kingis Quair' and the Rereading of Lancastrian Poetry.
- Published
- Martin, Joanna. "The Translations of Fortune: James I's 'Kingis Quair' and the Rereading of Lancastrian Poetry." In Nicola Royan and Sally Mapstone, eds. Langage Cleir Illumynate: Scottish Poetry from Barbour to Drummond, 1375-1630 (Amsterdam: Brill Academic Publishers; 2007), pp. 43-60.
- Review
- Martin reads the "Kingis Quair" against Gower's "Confessio" and Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," "La Mal Regle," and the "Series." "The concerns of Gower and Hoccleve with exemplarity, self-reformation, and good governance," she argues, "were important for James's composition of the 'Quair,' offering sophisticated instances in which personal history is used to examine broader institutional conditions" (44). Both poets' work influenced the shifting position of the "Quair"'s narrator, helped James "negotiate the Lancastrian influences on his early life, finally proposing an alternative to the dangerous unpredictability of contemporary English politics" (44). Those influences stemmed from his treatment over eighteen years of captivity by Henry IV and V, of which there are conflicting accounts, and insights gained with the coronation of the child Henry VI (45). In Martin's view, the CA "cannot have made wholly comfortable reading for the Lancastrian dynasty" (46), as Hoccleve and Gower "envisage solutions to misrule as elusive" (50). James finds means to differentiate himself from Amans and Hoccleve's several narrators, "who cannot bring their reason to their predicaments, control their desires, or envision remedies for contemporary problems" (51). Martin sees parallels with the character of Apollonius in CA VIII: "A captive in another 'countree,' James's directionless 'planctus' is reminiscent of that of Gower's tormented and exiled prince" (52). Yet James, via love for his lady, grasps Gower's lesson, that "while escaping treachery in the political macrocosm may not be possible . . . one can better equip one's self for its challenges through inward virtue" (53). This wisdom is apparent in the "Quair" narrator's encounter with Fortune, in which he like Apollonius demonstrates "fortitude and true and patient service in love" that can be applied as well to "political treachery" (57). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 2007
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion
Confessio Amantis